A Reason to Hurry
by ScribbleWiggy
Summary: After the Walk. The winner who's gained everything, and has lost everything in the process. Also, talk of self-harm, but it doesn't actually happen, just the lead up to it.


**I... don't know what this is, to be honest with you. I finished reading _The Long Walk_ again and I decided to write a FanFic for my favorite book. **

**I guess it's okay? I really don't know.**

* * *

There was buzzing, and blurs, and no sensation beneath his waist, but that was okay. Garraty hadn't expected there to be anything other than that. Beating your head repeatedly against the hard pavement of a street would do that to you, he had thought, before doing that exact same thing. His entire goal had been to knock himself out, perhaps even kill himself if he was lucky enough, anything to get to wherever that dark figure that had beckoned him had been.

Or… wait. _Had_ he beat his head against the pavement, and _then_ gotten shot, or was it the other way around? Because, he had most definitely been shot, which possibly explained the lack of feeling in his legs. But… that didn't make sense. Why would they have shot him? He had won the Walk. Right?

Unless he _hadn't_. Garraty suddenly had the very insistent urge to fight someone. He had walked down them all. He _had_. Stebbins had been the last one, and he hadn't been sure if he would walk down Stebbins, but something inside Stebbins had cracked, had split in half, had created the separation between _before the Walk_ and _after the Walk_. _After the Walk_ was supposed to be good, supposed to be bliss. Everything he wanted, that was what the Prize promised.

So… what was going on? Because he certainly hadn't been given anything that he wanted, unless the shot that had been fired at him had actually killed him. Surely, though, wherever he was supposed to have gone after death wasn't… wherever he was.

Garraty realized then that his eyes were opened. He decided that the first step to figuring out what the hell was going on would be to open them.

He did, and was met by a bright light that made him want to close them again. Instead of doing that, he settled for a middle ground, and squinted instead, trying to get some type of bearing. He thought that he would be greeted by a familiar face, at least, whether it be a living one or a dead one, but neither was there. Instead, when his vision had cleared, he saw he was gazing up at a white ceiling, of a room with white walls.

 _Hospital_ , he thought, and then he groaned, weakly, and allowed his eyes to shut again. _Dammit. God dammit all!_

Why didn't anything go right, ever?

Why did he change his mind so much?

During the majority of the Walk, he hadn't realized how much he had wanted to live until it had sunk in that he _wouldn't live_ unless he walked down everyone. And he had. And once he had, he had immediately wanted to die again, which was the reason he'd signed up for the Walk in the first place. What was wrong with him?

Garraty forced himself to sit up, and groaned again. The feeling that had been missing in his legs before suddenly came rushing back, all at once, and it sent up a dizzying sensation to his head. He tried to put his hands around it, to hold it, but found that one arm was attached to an IV, and the other was wrapped up in a sling. He blinked at the sling for a moment, wondering what had happened to warrant that, and then decided he must have landed on it funny when he'd hit the road or something and broken it.

He licked his lips, which weren't exactly chapped, but were definitely dry, and glanced around again. He was in a hospital room for sure; he could see the white curtains drawn across the single window in the room, and next to his bed was a small table that held a TV remote and the button that patients could use to call for a nurse.

Ignoring both of these things, Garraty shifted, really wanting to be able to sit up, and wondering if his bed was one of the ones that could lift his toso up by pushing a button. He used the arm that was connected to the IV to feel around, but he didn't come in contact with anything that felt promising.

He then realized that he _really_ needed to piss.

Gritting his teeth, he used his injured arm to push himself upright. A small hiss emerged from his clenched teeth, but other than that, he resisted from making any other sounds, not wanting to draw attention to himself. He'd had enough of people watching him urinate while he had been walking.

At least he wasn't paralyzed, like he had thought he had been. He was able to turn his body enough to rest his feet on the floor. He flexed his toes, gazing down at the white bandages that were wrapped around both of them, and realized that walking was going to be just as much of a struggle as it had been before. Oddly enough, a lyric from a Genesis song drifted into his head: _I can't dance, and I can't talk, the only thing about me is the way that I walk_.

Garraty grinned, although he imagined it looked more like a grimace than anything. He probably looked the same as the bank robber who's about to get shot by the cops.

He tried to put some weight on his feet, which he'd rested on the floor. They ached, sure, but he thought they would be able to hold him up. So, which as much effort as he was willing, Garraty pushed himself to a standing position… and didn't immediately fall over.

"Nice one."

He started at the voice, which had sounded like it had come from behind him. He spun around, expecting to see someone there, but it was only the blank wall of the hospital. And moving so quickly had made him dizzy, again, and his feet were shouting, now.

Garraty cursed at them, amiably, and then he shuffled slowly towards the partially opened door that led in the room's water closet.

He avoided looking in the mirror over the sink until he had finished washing his hands after relieving himself, and when he did, he was surprised by how clean he looked. His face was thinner than it had been, but someone had shaved him while he'd been out, and his hair had been trimmed. There were the light shadows of bags under his eyes, and there was no glimmer in them, not even from the reflection of the bathroom light.

It was then Garraty realized that he _should_ have been a dead man, and he was one, somewhere deep down.

He suddenly had the desperate need to meet that part of himself. He looked around the bathroom for something that he could use, something to speed up the process. In doing so, he ripped the IV out of his arm, but that was fine; he wouldn't need it, anyway, not where he was going.

His eyes settled on the mirror again, and after a moment, his fist raised to meet it as well. The glass shattered, leaving a broken version of his reflection. Garraty punched it again, and several shards came loose. He grabbed for one, cutting his fingers open in the process, and pressed it against his wrist.

Almost at once, it flew from his hand.

Garraty blinked at the glass shard as it clattered to the ground. He then realized that his hands were shaking, and decided he must have dropped it. He exhaled slowly to steady himself, and grabbed another shard instead, holding onto this one a bit tighter. He moved it towards his wrist, and suddenly, there was another hand wrapped around the wrist of the hand holding the shard, keeping it from cutting open the other.

"No, Ray."

Garraty blinked, and followed the arm of the hand that had grabbed his wrist to a shoulder, and that shoulder to a neck, and that neck to a head. He dropped the glass shard out of shock, and fell to the floor as he gaped up at McVries, who was gazing down at him with a fire in his eyes.

"You don't want to do that," he said, quietly.

"Oh, let him." Garraty's head swiveled to the left as Collie Parker pushed himself off of the wall, moving closer to where McVries stood. "Let him get what he deserves, like the rest of us."

"None of us _deserved_ it, Parker," said a voice with a slight Southern drawl, reproachfully, and then Baker was glaring at Collie.

"Sure we did," Abraham sighed, leaning his arm on Collie's shoulder, gazing down at Garraty with a reproachful expression. "We all signed up for the damn thing, didn't we? And none of us backed out, even though we could have."

" _Should_ have," Olson corrected, approaching them on McVries's otherside. "I'd definitely take it all back, take a chance to start over." He looked down at Garraty as well. "I did it wrong, after all. Isn't that what I yelled before I got my intestines shot out?"

"Something like that," Pearson agreed, moving up on Baker's right. "I honestly can't remember."

"The point is, Garraty," Baker said, dryly, glaring at the others, "that you don't want to kill yourself."

"You really don't, pal," Parker grumbled. "Live, I guess, since you were the one that outlasted the rest of us. I guess _that's_ what you deserve."

Garraty couldn't believe it. They were all standing over him, looking how they had before the Walk had began, all looking raring to rip, to put it in the Major's words. None of them looked dead, and yet they were talking as if they were.

He remembered that he was supposed to be dead, then, too, and reached for a piece of glass.

"What did I say, dammit?" McVries growled, kicking the one that he made a grab for away from him. "Stop it."

"I don't want the Prize," he whispered, looking between all of them. "I really don't. I just want it to be over. I'm a dead man."

"Well, no," Abraham said. "You're actually not, since you're alive."

"I shouldn't be," Garraty insisted. "It… it should be any one of you. It should be… it should be someone else, someone who actually wanted to win the whole time. I -"

"Garraty, shut up for a second, and _think_ ," Olson interrupted. "If you hadn't wanted to win, you would have sat down like Pete, here, or attacked the soldiers like dumbass Parker over there." He gestured towards the two of them with his head, and Parker showed him his middle finger in a one-man salute. Olson ignored him, and continued to gaze at Garraty. "You didn't, and you won, and now you should… well, keep winning, I guess."

"I don't want to keep winning," Garraty said, and his voice broke. He drew his knees to his chest, and placed his forehead against them, gritting his teeth again as his eyes burned. "I didn't want to win!"

"Lower your voice, asshole," Pearson hissed, "or some doctor will come busting in here and wonder why you're crying on the floor. Get over yourself."

"He's right, Ray," Baker said. "You won. You might as well get used to it."

"You should have won," Garraty said, feeling desperate. He looked up again, and looked at all of them. "All of you."

"There's only one winner in the Long Walk, Garraty," McVries said, and his offered him that thin smile that had gotten on his nerves so many times during the Walk. "And guess what, baby? You're him."

Garraty wiped his eyes quickly on his sleeve, trying to figure out what else there was to say. By the time he'd lowered his arm, however, they were all gone, leaving him alone in the bathroom, amidst the shards of the shattered glass. Garraty blindly grabbed for one, wanting to do anything to bring his friends back.

Instead of a friend appearing this time, it was Stebbins, and he was gazing at Garraty, a glint in his eyes, one that Garraty thought looked dangerous.

"You actually going to do it?" he asked, and Garraty blinked at him, before looking around the bathroom. No one else was there. He turned his eyes back to Stebbins.

"I want Pete," he said. "I want Pete and Art and Hank and…" He trailed off. Had he really never learned what Abe's first name had been? What was wrong with him?

Stebbins was smiling at him, but it wasn't anywhere near the smile that McVries had given him. "Then do it, Garraty," he offered, gesturing to the shard of glass he was holding. "Do it and you'll have them."

"Fuck you," Garraty said, and he wasn't sure if he was speaking to himself or to Stebbins. "Fuck you fuck you fuck you…"

As he chanted, he pressed the shard of glass into his wrist, and Stebbins let out that low laugh that he had uttered so many times on the Walk. Garraty lifted a glare to him, but Stebbins was gone.

Garraty turned his gaze down to the shard of glass again, and started to push pressure on it. Before he could actually cut into himself, however, a hand covered his.

"Ray, please." It was McVries again, but Garraty did not raise his eyes to look at him. "Please don't do this. You won, you should stay alive. You're actually one of the only winners who might still be sane enough to actually enjoy his Prize. You have to help Scramm's wife, remember? Like we all promised?"

"Come back," Garraty growled. "Come back, and I won't do it."

There was a pause, and when McVries spoke again, there was a bit of humor in his voice: "I'm not the one who gives you anything you want, Garraty."

"McVries."

"Yes, dear?"

"Why…" Garraty trailed off again. There were so many ways for him to finish that sentence.

"Because I was never joking," was McVries's reply, even though Garraty hadn't actually asked a question. "That's why." The hand around his squeezed a bit tighter. "Let go of it, and get back into bed, Ray. Please."

Ray hesitated a moment. He thought that if he didn't let go of the shard of glass, McVries would be forced to stay with him, and he really didn't want him to leave. He hadn't wanted any of them to leave, even Stebbins.

He released a sob, and dropped the shard of glass. All of the air seemed to leave the room as McVries's presence left as well, and Garraty stayed where he was on the floor, crying like a man who's lost everything.

And who was to say that in gaining everything, he hadn't?

* * *

"Do you need anything else, Ray?"

He looked up from the book he was reading and at Jan, who was watching him with careful eyes. She was always so careful around him, nowadays, like she was afraid he would break if she even said the wrong thing?

"No thanks," he said, and he smiled at her to show her that he meant it. "I'm all right."

She nodded, and then she ducked inside the house, closing the door behind her. Garraty hesitated a moment, and then he sighed and closed the book as well. He ran his hand over the cover. _The Woman in White_ by Wilkie Collins. Baker had said it was his favorite book. It only seemed right that Garraty read it.

He turned his gaze forward, studying the vast plains before him. He hadn't wanted a big house, he'd told his mother when they were making the decision on whether or not they would move as part of his Prize, but he _had_ wanted to move. The house that they had lived in had been too small, carried too much badness in it, from his brother's death to his father's removal by the Squads. It was just a bad place to be.

They hadn't left Maine, though, just moved into a bigger town, closer to the border. The house was bigger, too, but not by much, and it had a porch. That was one improvement Garraty had been insistent on. He had wanted a porch, badly, and a rocking chair. He loved his rocking chair.

He hummed to himself, a tune that didn't match up with any real song, and leaned back in the chair, making it tilt backwards. He picked his feet up, a little, and it moved forward again. He smiled, and closed his eyes. It was the simple things that made him happiest, he'd realized after some time had passed. It wasn't all the money, it was all the small things that he hadn't been able to experience _before_ the money.

He had sent plenty to Scramm's wife, just like he and all the other guys had promised. She hadn't even written him back, and that was okay. He hadn't wanted her to write him back, which was why he hadn't included his name with the gift. Still, that hadn't stopped him from receiving a tiny photograph of a grinning baby boy in blue coveralls several months later.

Lead lined, too. That had also been a promise, and he'd made good on that one, too. He hadn't been able to go to any of the funerals, but that was okay, too, because all that mattered was that Baker had gotten his lead lined coffin, so that none of the creepy crawlies would be able to get to him.

Garraty partially wished that all of the guys had had a wish that they had wanted fulfilled, if they bit it. He wished that he could send Parker's family enough money to help cure an ailing member, or that he could make sure Abraham's ashes were spread exactly where he had wanted them to be. He wished that Pearson would have the saying that he wanted on his tombstone, pr that Olson's mother knew that he had walked even past the point where he should have. He wished…

He wished.

He exhaled, and looked down at the book again. His chair rocked again, and he startled, because he hadn't meant for it too. Looking around, he saw that McVries was there, pushing it for him. McVries grinned, gave him another push, and then moved around to stand in front of him.

"What do you wish for me, Ray?" he asked, and Garraty shrugged.

"Maybe… maybe that you'd get your scar fixed, before you were buried, I don't know," he said, and McVries laughed.

"Is it that ugly?" he queried.

Garraty quickly shook his head. "I just figure that… I don't know, it's a reminder of a shitty time, so you would like it gone."

"Can't get rid of the shitty times, why get rid of the reminder of them?" Garraty shrugged, and McVries smiled at him. "You're the sweetest, Ray. The world's lucky to have you."

"Why do you keep coming around?" he asked, and McVries raised an eyebrow. "I'm serious. Don't you have anything better to do than torture me?"

"I'm torturing you? Sorry. I can go."

"No, don't," Garraty said, probably a little too quickly, because McVries smirked at him. Garraty grunted, and leaned back in his chair. "What's it like?"

"Not time for you to know that yet, pal," McVries replied, settling down on the porch step. After a moment, Garraty stood and joined him there. McVries gestured towards the plains. "Wheat?"

Garraty shook his head. "We don't grow wheat in Maine," he said.

"Oh, right," McVries replied. "I forgot, sorry."

The two of them sat in silence for a moment, and then Garraty exhaled a breath. McVries glanced sideways at him. "I thought I'd be happy, eventually," he said, "but I don't think that's ever going to happen."

McVries nodded wisely. "Makes sense," he said. "You did experience ninety nine deaths, some of them the deaths of guys that had become good friends. I don't think anyone expects you to be happy. Content, for sure, but not happy."

"Shouldn't I be happy, though?" Garraty asked, that old desperate feeling creeping back into his chest. "I mean, when you stopped me from killing myself before, all those times, it's like you knew something that I didn't."

McVries smiled, but this time it was sad. "I know a lot of things that you don't, Ray," he said.

"But like _what_ , Pete?" Garraty demanded, angry now. "And why can't I know them?"

"Because you won," McVries said after a moment. "That's the one thing you lose when you win; whatever the other ninety learn when they get their ticket."

"Then what did you know that I didn't _before_ you got your ticket, all those times you Musketered and saved me?" McVries did not respond, and Garraty huffed, facing forward again. "Fuck you, then."

"I knew that I was going to get my ticket," McVries murmured, and Garraty glanced at him. "I knew it, and Baker knew it, and I think all us guys knew it, at least after a certain point." He met Garraty's gaze. "I always knew I was going to sit down."

"You didn't have to," Garraty whispered at last, and McVries offered him that thin smile.

"Sure I did," he replied, standing, "because you were the one who was going to win."

Garraty stood as well, but did not follow McVries as he stepped off the porch. "Are you going to come back again?" he asked, and McVries looked back at him, a glimmer in his eyes that Garraty would never have again.

"I don't know," he said, grinning. "Funny how I know everything except that, huh?" He dipped his head. "Take it easy, Ray."

With that, he turned and walked away towards the plains, and when Garraty blinked, he was gone.

The door opened behind him, and Jan stuck her head outside. "Who were you talking to?" she asked him.

Garraty shook his head, pushing himself to his feet. "No one," he said. "Is lunch ready?"

Jan nodded, and went back into the house. Garraty followed her, walking slowly, not in any hurry.

* * *

 **Like I said, I have no idea what this was, or even if it was good. I mean, it _seems_ good, but uh... I don't know. **

**Go-Go-Garraty.**


End file.
